The Donor
by LadyTerideth
Summary: Tony is in dire need of something...but as it turns out there just arent that many people who can give it to him. Takes place after "Boxed In".
1. Chapter 1

Hey everybody!!! This is rated T but I may have to change that later….maybe not. Entertainment purposes only. And, as always, I own not a thing.

Tony was glaring at the telephone on his desk. It was 1:00 am and he had the squad room all to himself. He had come back to work on finishing his report, as was his habit these days. But something just didn't feel right tonight. He longed to here the outrageously annoying "click click click click" of McGee's fingers on his keyboard. The office was just too quiet tonight, and something had put him in a mood.

If he was being honest with himself, he had been in a complete funk for at least a week. It hadn't started with the sleep deprivation, but that sure as hell wasn't helping. He had tried to take it easy tonight, to stay at home, away from the office and try to reboot his brain, but the beer in the fridge was too cold, the porn on the TV was too raunchy, his bed too soft, his couch to hard. He couldn't seem to shake the feeling that something was just off. And his back had been absolutely killing him since Ziva's last attempt to "protect" him. She's tackled him to the floor of that shipping container harder than any linebacker in college.

Ziva. She wasn't here either. She had offered to make him dinner tonight, and he had declined. For reasons he still hadn't let himself explore. So he told her no, and when she dropped him off at home he had waited a tasteful 47 ½ minutes before calling a cab and coming right back in to work. And now that he was here, his chair was too hard, the office to quiet, the lights too bright and mental chatter in his head, way too loud. He had to snap out of the funk.

He stood up out of his desk and winced, the upper right side of his back on fire. His vision tunneled for a few seconds. From the pain? Or had he stood up too fast? He pondered that for a few seconds, enough time to let the pain recede back to a dull ache, and let the darkness recede from the corners of his vision. He walked around his desk and out to the elevator. Abby's lab. That was positively the most comfortable room in the building. Plus, she had a sleeping bag and he was pretty sure that she wouldn't mind if he borrowed it for a few hours. That sounded just about right.

He made it to the elevator and punched the down button. The pressure of the moving elevator made his head spin again, and he had just enough time to wonder, "what the hell did Ziva do to me…" before the blood rushed to his head and a wave of darkness conquered his vision.

The security camera in the elevator had just enough light to capture the images of the lanky senior field agent collapsing into a graceful heap on the floor.

Read and Review, but only if you really want to. I don't want to pressure you or anything. ::DO IT:: And two things… number one, I know we have never seen evidence of a security camera in "Gibbs office", but they have never really said that there isn't one either, and two, No, Tony does not have a concussion. Yay!!! I am back to after 3 years!!!


	2. Chapter 2

Beep….Beep…Beep…

Tony's alarm clock sounded very wrong; too slow and muted, as if it were coming from under a pillow or was drowned in the bath tub or something. And if he wasn't mistaken, it had been going off for about an hour. That was wrong.

The sight that greeted his opening eyes was even more disorienting that a randomly water-logged alarm clock would have been. His own dark, cozy bedroom had been replaced with a smaller, colder, more sterile looking white one. There was medical looking tubing sticking out of his arm. An IV. The beeping was coming from somewhere above and to the right of his head. He was pretty sure that it was beeping in time to his heart, since once it dawned on him that he was once again hospitalized, the rhythm of the metronome sped considerably. The scratchy hospital sheets were pulled up to his chest and he was reasonably sure that had he wanted to bound out of bed and take a piss of his own accord, there would be a fairly embarrassing urinary catheter in the way. He really couldn't remember what had happened, but he was pretty sure that it had sucked.

He tried to take a physical inventory without moving, and failing that, he pushed himself up on the non-perforated hand and tried to figure out what he had been doing before he… what? Got shot? Got knocked out? Passed out drunk? Nothing hurt, exactly. His neck was a little stiff, as if he had laid on it wrong, and there was a dull ache in his back, but nothing really that would justify the hospital setting. He was turned around at the waist, trying in vain to look behind him for some sign of a physical injury, but only succeeded in discovering that the hospital gown he was wearing had no back to it and his undergarments hadn't survived with him.

Why is it that the first thing that hospitals do before they poke, and prod and humiliate you, is get you naked?

And where was everybody? Shouldn't there be someone here with him? If he had been injured in the line of duty, (and what else could it be?) shouldn't one of his coworkers be here to explain everything to him when he awoke, congratulate him on surviving, and thank him for taking one for the team? He was just settling in to what he thought was a well deserved sulk, when the door opened and a tall dark haired nurse came into the room.

"Oh good. You're awake. Didn't take you as long as they thought, did it hun?" She was probably at least three or four years younger than him, so the "hun" annoyed him. But, trading pride for information, he sat up a little straighter and gave her "the look". The look was one that he had had Gibbs use on him at least daily since he had joined NCIS and he had been practicing. It wasn't perfect yet, (as Abby would tell him over and over), but it go the desired result from the nurse.

"If you give me just a second to get your vital signs, I will go and let the doctor know you are awake. And there are some people here to see you too, just as soon as Dr. Chase gives me the ok."

See? His team was there to see him after all. Abby was probably out there, bouncing around, worried sick and driving everyone nuts, McGee would be pacing back and forth alternating between trying not to be sick and trying to calm Abby down, Gibbs would be all quietly stoic and pissed looking, and Ziva would be confusing herself trying to figure out how to butcher the American idiom of "Get well soon." But hopefully one of them would be able to get it together long enough to fill him in on what the hell was going on.

He settled himself back against the pillows the nurse had just fluffed, and tried to look stoic. The nurse gave one last look at one of the monitors on the wall and booked it from the room.

The door opened again, probably no more than 5 minutes later, this time admitting a male doctor. He was blonde, tall, young and immediately got on Tony's nerves. He was definitely going to be cramping Tony's style.

"What's up, Doc?" earned Tony a raised eyebrow.

"Well, firstly, I'm Dr. Chase. I was your admitting doctor in E.R." He had a very strong Australian accent. Even worse. God forbid Ziva should get anywhere near this guy. He'd never get her attention back after the two of them got to laughing about "Americans" and went out to "throw some shrimp on the barby." He had been internalizing so thoroughly that he had completely missed what the doctor had said.

"I'm sorry…what?" Brilliant.

"Tony, are you having trouble with concentration? Or focus? Its important for you to tell me these things if we are going to figure out what's wrong here."

Figure out what's wrong here? Well that wasn't good.

A/N Ok, first, I apologize for whatever that was. And I am still not sure why Dr. Chase made his way into this story, but he fits. And well, lets face it, he's hot. Any how, also wanted to tell you that I am sorry that the first few chapters are kinda short… the middle of the story is the part that came spilling out of my brain like overcooked dehydrated Japanese noodles at 3 in the morning and so that is written already…but I am finding the lead in to those chapters to be kind of difficult. Anywho, it will get longer… and better… but what do you think?


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